No Way Out- Sirius Black
by aaronlittleton
Summary: After another dreadful summer with his abusive parents, Sirius turns to unhealthy ways of coping with his emotions. TRIGGER WARNING: Eating disorders, self harm, and abuse
1. 1

The happiest moment of every year was seeing his friends after a long, draining summer. Sirius didn't know what he would do without them.

"Prongs, did you even try to make your hair look better?" Sirius teased, slapping his friend on the back and playfully putting his hands through his hair. James' biggest insecurity was how his hair always looked like a used mop, even after several weak charms.

"Shut it Padfoot. Your hair's almost as long as Snivellus' now," James retorted, holding back a snicker as Sirius pretended to barf.

Peter and Remus were already waiting in the usual train compartment, counting their coins and how much their could spend on sweets. James was the one who always brought the most money because his parents have always been very lenient with most things reguarding their son.

Sirius' parents were the complete opposite of James', but none of the boys knew that. Sirius was mighty good at keeping his own secrets and stopped at nothing to make sure that his image was never hurt.

"Moony, Wormtail, what a delight!" Sirius said when he entered their compartment, eyeing the coins in the boys' hands.

"Nice to see you too, Sirius," Remus mumbled with humor in his eyes at Sirius' reaction.

"How much you got there?" Sirius questioned, sitting next to Peter, and James, trailing behind him, sat next to Remus.

"Remus and I combined what our parents gave us and we have ten galleons," Peter exclaimed, showing James and Sirius the pile in his hands.

"Don't forget to save some for Hogsmeade," Sirius commented, remembering the years before where they couldn't buy anything because James had spent all of his on sweets and Peter and Remus hadn't managed to haggle some from their parents.

"Where's your share, Padfoot?" Remus asked, motioning for him to add some into the pile.

He looked down into his lap and suddenly became very interested in the sleeve of his shirt. His parents hadn't given him any money and he hadn't managed to steal any, either. In the years before he had always taken a few galleons from his brother's room, but this summer he got in trouble for sneaking into his Dad's room. He still had bruises and scars from last month when that happened.

"Don't got any," He mumbled, keeping his eyes down.

"Come on, you can't expect us to buy all of us something without you giving up some of your share, Sirius," Peter complained, nudging him in the ribs. Sirius had to hold in a wince from the pain in his side where he was punished, but he just shrugged.

"My mum gave me money but I had to spend it on a new robe set for this year. I grew out of my old ones," Sirius lied and avoided eye contact. Why couldn't he have stolen something, it wasn't even that hard?

"Save your money for Hogsmeade, I'll buy the sweets," James informed them, getting up to go find the cart.

The rest of the train ride was silent, even while the boys ate their sweets. All you could hear was the crunching of candies and the noise of plastic wrappers.

Sirius couldn't keep his thoughts away. The events from the summer kept replaying in his mind and no matter how he tried to distract himself, he couldn't. Remembering the pain that his father purposefully inflicted upon him with a wand lingered in his mind, never leaving. The word _Crucio_ haunted him and constantly threatened him. But the pain that his mother left him emotionally hurt worse.

 _You tainted the family name!_

 _You will never be as good as Regulus._

 _If we get even one letter home this year about misbehavior or grades, we will bring you straight home!_

 _Why can't you just be useful for once?_

 _Don't waste Mitty's cooking on him._

 _He's not worth anything._

 _If your father catches you snooping around or even leaving your room again, he will kill you!_

Sirius was dragged out of his thoughts when the train halted. He quickly threw on his robes and followed the rest of the students to Hogwarts' grounds.


	2. 2

Sirius couldn't bring himself to eat anything for dinner. He just wasn't hungry.

"Aren't you going to eat?" Remus asked him, eyeing his empty plate and his glossy eyes.

"No, I'm feeling a bit sick," Sirius replied, looking down at the edge of the Gryffindor table. The newly sorted first years seemed way too happy for seven years of work.

"Have some pumpkin juice," James offered, pouring some in Sirius' goblet. But Sirius just stood up and excused himself to his dorms, claiming he felt too sick to be down in the Great Hall.

But that wasn't the truth. He couldn't handle seeing his friends and everyone else not having a burden as heavy as his. He hadn't known anyone else- maybe besides Remus- who isn't always giddy with excitement with the fact that they're at Hogwarts.

Sirius' day of fake smiles and laughter exhausted him and he lay down on his bed and fell asleep within minutes, above his covers and still in his robes.

"Goodmorning Princess,"

Sirius opened his eyes and jumped back when he saw James' face staring right at him, leaning over his bed.

"What the fuck, Potter," Sirius groaned, running his hand through his long hair.

"Sorry, Padfoot," James laughed, patting his friend on the back, "I just thought that you'd want to take a shower before breakfast,"

Sirius frowned at the word breakfast. He still wasn't really hungry at all, but he couldn't even bring himself to lie at this hour in the morning. He grumbled some curses at James before grabbing a towel and heading toward the shower.

In about ten minutes time, Sirius was dressed and his hair was dried with a simple charm that took him years to master. Charms were not Sirius' specialty.

By the time the four boys went down to breakfast, Sirius still hadn't thought of an excuse to why he wasn't going to be eating. He didn't even know himself- all he knew was that it wasn't normal, so he had to lie. Now _that_ was Sirius' specialty.

They sat down and the three promptly began filling their plates with breakfast, but Sirius just grabbed an apple and stood up.

"I've left my wand upstairs, and I've been planning all summer how we can get back at Snivellus. I'll tell you guys about it in Transfuguration," Sirius lied, excusing himself from the table effectively.

James snickered at the thought of pranking Snape, and Sirius smiled at the fact that he fell for his lie. Remus stopped him and handed him an apple, and Sirius thanked him quickly and rushed out into the hall. He threw his apple in the nearest trash can he could find and headed back to the Gryffindor Tower to rest before class.

The day flew by quickly, and Sirius had made up a good excuse to miss lunch but not without James and Remus' voices of concern.

"Padfoot, stay for lunch. You haven't eaten with us since we came," James pleaded and Peter agreed.

"Professor Slughorn said he wanted to talk to me, remember?" Sirius lied, yet again, but that convinced his friends. He was pretty sure that Remus was starting to catch on, though.

Instead of going to Slughorn, he went back to Gryffindor Tower to try and start on his Transfiguration homework. But he didn't plan on doing it well, he'd probably just end up copying off of Remus like always.

His afternoon classes went by almost as fast as his morning classes had and he found himself in the same dilemma. Food.

There weren't enough excuses for him to use anymore, so he had to stay. If he was at home and didn't come down for food, his family would be glad not to see him. Sirius tried to go down as less as possible when at home in fear of messing up and getting punished. He'd rather be a little hungry than a lot hurt and embarrassed.

Sirius sat down next to Remus and put some food on his plate. He didn't realize how hungry he was until he started eating, and he felt like it would never stop. Just eating and eating until-

"Sirius, you alright there?" Remus asked him, and Sirius was pulled out of his trance. He realized that he was about to put a fourth serving of food onto his plate.

"Merlin- I guess I was hungry after skipping lunch," Sirius replied, his cheeks turning red. He shouldn't have eaten that much.

"Glad to hear that you aren't sick anymore," James said to his friend inbetween bites of roast beef.

"Yeah," Sirius laughed, but felt horrible. How much had he eaten?

Getting an idea, Sirius stood up and excused himself to the bathroom. James and Remus didn't even think twice about Sirius' action- and he was glad. Upon arriving, he locked himself into the stall and tried to remember the nausea spell. They had to practice it in Potions last year just in case someone ingested something poisonous.

 _Nauseem,_ Sirius said with his wand pointed at his throat. He became very nauseous, as expected, and retched up all of his dinner until there was nothing left. Feeling satisfied with the emptiness of his stomach, Sirius washed his hands and rinsed his mouth before leaving.

And Sirius survived his first day back at Hogwarts without anyone finding out about what happened in the summer or what he was doing to himself. He was just nervous for the months to come.


	3. 3

Sirius had eaten a big dinner, once again, just to keep his friends from not worrying about himself. He had quickly said the incantation and got it over with so he could play Exploding Snaps with James. He was one of the only people who could even have a chance at winning against James.

As Sirius was leaving the bathroom, he bumped into someone who was standing just outside the door. Peter.

"Sirius..." Peter said, his voice shaky.

"Yeah, Wormtail? Wanna play Exploding Snaps with James and I for once?" Sirius causally asked, knowing that Peter heard what he did in the bathroom.

"W-what were you doing in there?" Peter ignored Sirius' question.

"Pissing, what did you think I was doing," Sirius replied, shrugging off Peter's concern and starting to walk outside where James was waiting.

"I heard you puking," Peter said in his quiet voice. Sirius noted that Peter was nervous, more than usual.

"Whatever you heard in there, it's not what you think it is," Sirius said as he made eye contact with James from across the courtyard. He quickly walked away from Peter, but not before he gave him a glare that told him to shut his big mouth about what he heard.

"You ready to get destroyed, Padfoot?" James shouted. He's always been a little too competitive, but that always worked in his favor. People would always back down or never even start with him.

During the whole game, Sirius couldn't concentrate. What if Peter went to tell Remus, or worse- a teacher? His parents would get notified that he's mentally ill and he would have to get pulled out of Hogwarts and maybe put into St. Mungos. His parents would actually disown him from the shame and humiliation and he wouldn't have anywhere to go-

"You okay?" James' voice pulled Sirius from his mind and back to reality. He had lost the game.

"Yeah, sorry. Just a little bit distracted," Sirius covered up, heading back into the castle.

James followed Sirius like a dog, bothering him about what's on his mind.

"Aw come on, I'm your best mate! You can tell me," James prodded, literally poking Sirius and playing with his long hair.

"It's nothing, really," Sirius turned a corner and walked quickly up the stairs to Gryffindor Tower, trying to lose James. He wasn't fast enough though- probably from the lack of food.

James, probably sensing how Sirius was hiding something, grabbed his arm. Sirius never tried this hard to hide something from one of them, it wasn't like him.

"What happened?" James tried looking Sirius in the eyes but he just shrugged.

"Nothing happened, it was just I got a letter from my mum," Sirius lied quickly, pulling his arm from James' hand and muttered the password to the fat lady.

They entered and James had to rush after Sirius as he basically ran up the stairs. He needed a little more time to think of a lie.

"What did the letter say?" James asked once they were in their room.

"My grandad passed," Was all he said, trying not to weave a complicated lie that he wouldn't be able to follow later.

It was then that he noticed Peter was sitting on Sirius' bed, waiting for him to return from his game with James. Of course, he wanted to talk about it.

"Oh, I'm sorry mate I didn't mean to-"

"Fine, I didn't know him well," Sirius said without looking at James, but advancing towards Peter with an empty expression.

"Peter, remember that thing I promised to show you in the downstairs corridor?" Sirius made up a random excuse, hoping that he'd follow along.

"Um, n- oh yes, that.. _thing_ ," Peter stumbled over his words, but James had already zoned out of the conversation and started to strip down for his shower.

"See ya later, Prongs," Sirius said goodbye to James and Peter joined him in exiting their room.

Sirius gave Peter a weird glance about how bad he was at lying, and they exiting the Gryffindor Common room and turned a few corridors to find an useless, empty one.

"Okay, look, you can't tell anyone what you heard. I know that you know because you're smarter than all of us make you out to be, but just don't say anything- don't tell James or Remus," Sirius quickly pleaded, wanting to get this conversation over with as quickly as possible.

Peter was silent for a few moments, Sirius guessed it was because he was trying to figure out what was the right thing to do. Peter always had someone to follow that he knew would make the best judgment, but now it was up to him. And Sirius played that up as much as possible- he thought that without James or Remus there to guide Peter, he could convince him to stay quiet.

"I don't want you to die," Peter whispered with emotion laced in his voice. It hurt Sirius to hear his friend like this because of him.

"I'm not going to die, for Merlin's sake! I'm just... going through a rough patch right now, that's all. I'll get over it," He felt bad for lying about getting over his eating problem, but if that's what he had to do for no one else to find out, he'd do it.

"Okay," Peter nodded.

"You won't tell anyone?"

"No. But Sirius..."

"Yeah?"

"Try to get better, okay?" Peter pleaded, and Sirius finally saw how much this was hurting his friend. Tears started rolling down Peter's face and Sirius just wanted to assure him that he was okay, but he couldn't lie more to him. He didn't deserve that.

Sirius slowly pulled Peter into a hug and they stayed like that- Peters face crying into Sirius' shoulder- until he couldn't hear his friend crying anymore.

He pulled away from Peter and asked, "You okay now?"

Peter nodded and wiped the tears off his face. They walked back to the Gryffindor Common room, bumping into Remus. Sirius gave the excuse that they were practicing their _aguamente_ spells, since Sirius' shirt was wet and Peters eyes were red. He wasn't sure if Remus believed him but he needed rest.

Before falling asleep, Sirius couldn't help but wonder how he was going to help Peter keep this secret. Every one of them knew just how horrible Peter was at keeping secrets and lying, so it wouldn't be long until he slips something. Sirius figured that he'd just have to cover for himself _and_ Peter now, as annoying as that sounds. And it was only a week before Halloween- they had so much more time at Hogwarts that it would almost be impossible that Peter would not let the cat out of the bag.


	4. 4

"Come on, it's true- I swear!"

"No way am I going to fall for another one of your tricks, Moony. How dumb do you think I am? An immortal wizard who's six hundred years old?" James laughed at how childish he believed Remus was being.

"No, really. It was in the restricted section," Remus huffed in frustration while James raised an eyebrow. It wasn't like him to break the rules.

"I've really been a bad influence on you, have I?" He grinned, "So how'd you get in there? You said you couldn't help Sirius and I brew a polyjuice potion because you couldn't get the book."

"Yeah, well it's not that hard to sneak in there with your cloak. You could do it yourself, Prongs," Remus replied, trying to focus back on his homework.

"Libraries are your specialty, not mine," He teased.

"Shut up, Potter,"

James snickered and tried to focus back on his Defense Against the Dark Arts homework, but he couldn't stop thinking about Nicolas Flamel.

"So how does he do it?" James finally asked.

"What?"

"How is Flamel immortal? Some kind of potion?"

Remus turned around from the desk to face James, his face obviously lit up with excitement that he was actually interested. James forced himself to contain his eye roll- at least until after he explained.

"Well, you see- there's the Philosophers Stone. Flamel created it himself and it can turn any metal into pure gold or be used to create the Elixir of Life. Technically he's not immortal, he just has an extended lifespan as long as he keeps drinking the potion. When he finally does decide to die, all he would have to do is to stop drinking the potion,"

"How do you even retain all of that information? Is there some kind of trick that you're keeping from us?" James exclaimed.

"It's called doing your homework. You should try it," Remus retorted with a grin, making a point to turn his chair so it was facing his desk and continue working on his homework.

There was a moment of laughter until James remembered that they all got their Astronomy exam grades back today.

"Moony, what did you get on the Astronomy exam? I got a C."

"I got a B."

"What, not an A? I'm so disappointed," James teased his friend.

"Astronomy isn't as practical," Remus muttered an excuse to his grades not being perfect, but James just ignored him.

"Did you see what Sirius got?"

"No, what did he get?" Remus replied, turning away from his homework to look at James.

"He got an F," James said solemnly, watching as his friend's face dropped. They both felt sorry for him.

"He was pretty great at Astronomy last year, he was the one who convinced us all to take it with him this year," Remus stated while James nodded in agreement.

"I think something's up with him, James,"

James' heart skipped a beat at how quickly the conversation turned from playful to serious. Whenever one of the four doesn't use their nicknames, they know that it's serious.

But James knew where Remus was coming from. They only saw him at one meal a day, even on weekends. He wasn't only doing bad in one class- all of his grades, that they knew of, were considerably low for Sirius.

"Maybe something happened with his parents in the summer. He almost never talks about his summer," James suggested, but Remus shook his head.

"He does that every year,"

Just then, Sirius, accompanied by Peter, came through the portrait hole in the middle of an engaged conversation. Both groups immediately stopped their conversation and awkwardly greeted each other.

"Whatchya talking about, Padfoot?" James asked his friend while he put on an innocent grin like they weren't talking about him.

Peter's cheeks turned red and he turned to Sirius with a nervous expression. Remus closely followed the pair's body language, trying to read it. He noticed how Sirius pulled on Peter's sleeve, as if silencing him, and how stressed Peter looked. Actually, Sirius looked stressed, Peter looked _di_ stressed. And all of them

knew how horrible Peter was at lying.

"Oh, nothing. You?" Sirius said with his cool tone, the one that James and Remus both recognized as the one that he used when he lied to teachers. Which was a lot.

"Us too," James replied, mocking Sirius' tone.

In the moment, Remus couldn't help but feel like something serious was going on. He didn't know how he knew, or how he figured it out, but Sirius saw it coming from a mile away. The look on Remus' face when he figures something out is too recognizable to ignore.

They all knew each other too well.

"Hey Peter, can we compare our Astronomy tests? I want to know why I got some wrong," Remus suddenly says, and Peter agrees. He muttered a quick excuse that his test was upstairs and he quietly told James to keep Sirius away from their room for a while before they left.

"So what'd you get on your test?" Peter asked as they entered their room.

"Oh, we're not comparing tests," Remus bluntly stated, whispering _Colloportus_ and putting his wand on the doorknob so it was locked.

"Then why'd-"

"Peter I need to ask you some things, but I need you to be truthful with me," Remus said, sitting on his bed across from Peter.

"O-okay."

"Do you know what's wrong with Sirius?"

There were a few moments of silence before Peter decided that he didn't want to lie.

"Yes," He said, his voice shaking with anxiety.

"What is it, then."

"I can't say."

Remus sighed. "If it's some girl drama, I don't even want to know. But I'm positive that Sirius does not get this worked up over a girl. I'm his friend too, I just want to help."

"Okay, i-it's just that I don't want to b-break his trust, it's too serious for me to tell you," Peter said, visibly getting more stressed as the conversation continued. This was an example of why most of the friends didn't trust Peter with simple lies- if it wasn't serious enough, he would spill.

"If its that serious, then you should really tell me. We could help him," Remus convinced Peter.

Peter took a few moments for him to think it through, just like he did with Sirius. But he was less hesitant with Remus because he trusted his judgement more than Sirius'.

"He doesn't eat. And when he does, he throws it up... on purpose," Peter said.

Remus was stunned. He sat there, his head in a fixed position and he was speechless. He hadn't expected it to be that bad- he probably thought that he had gotten in trouble with his parents or maybe some teacher and didn't want to tell them. But never this- Remus would've never guessed that his own friend was starving himself.

"Why didn't you tell anyone? He needs help," Remus questioned, standing up from the bed exiting the room after muttering _Alohomora_ on the door knob. He needed to talk to Sirius.

"He- he told me that he was fine!" Peter tried to defend himself and run to catch him, but Remus didn't have it. Friends are supposed to look out for each other. If they don't, no one else will.

Remus and Peter walked in on an almost empty Gryffindor Common Room. Only a few of the studious students were scattered in seats across the room with a book in hand since it was almost eleven p.m. And then there was James and Sirius- laughing about some stupid joke that James probably made.

Remus motioned for the pair to follow him and Peter back to their room, and they obliged. When they arrived, Sirius broke down in tears on the nearest bed- James'.

"Siri, everything's going to be alright. We're here for you no matter what," Remus assured his friend and sat on the bed next to him. Peter sat on the other side of Sirius to help Remus comfort him. James stood in front of the trio with an awkward feeling of being left out.

"I thought he didn't know his grandad that well," James said cluelessly.

Remus explained to James the seriousness of the situation, and all the confusion from his face was replaced with sorrow for his best friend. He joined them in comforting Sirius until he finally fell asleep on James' bed.


End file.
